Corruption Perceptions Index |28 January 2016

Seychelles’ ranking improves

Not one single country, anywhere in the world, is corruption-free and in the latest report released by Transparency International Seychelles’ ranking in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2015 has improved.

Seychelles’ CPI score is 55 out of 100 and the country is ranked 40th along with Cape Verde, Costa Rica and Latvia among 168 countries and territories included in the index.

Seychelles should be congratulated for making a great improvement as it moved three places up from the year 2014 when it was ranked 43rd out of 175 countries and is also the second least corrupt in Africa together with Cape Verde.

Seychelles went up four places in the rankings from 47th place and a score of 54 out of 100 in 2013 and in 2012, it scored 52 out of 100 and placed 51st on the list.

This is a very steady progress and we should note that President James Michel said in his presidential campaign last December that he will put in place an anti-corruption commission to fight against all corruption issues in the country.

According to Finance, Trade and The Blue Economy Minister Jean-Paul Adam, the commission will have the power to investigate and bring to justice corruption cases.

“It will function as per the United Nations convention on anti-corruption of which Seychelles is already a member,” he added when delivering the 2016 budget address.

Transparency International, a Berlin-based non-profit organisation, is committed to promoting accountability, integrity and transparency.

A country or territory’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). Its rank indicates its position relative to the other countries in the index.

Mauritius’ score of 53% puts it at 45th position, Madagascar is 123rd with a score of 28% while the Comoros are ranked 136rd with a sore of 26%.

Denmark leads the ranking with a score of 91%, followed in second and third places by Finland (90%) and Sweden (89%).

Canada is ninth (83%), United Kingdom, Germany and Luxembourg are joint 10th (81%), while the United States of America is 16th (76%).

The bottom two countries are North Korea and Somalia with identical score of 8% to be ranked joint 167th.

Although northern Europe emerges well in the index and is home to four of the top five countries, the report says this doesn’t mean it isn’t linked to corruption elsewhere.

“Just because a country has a clean public sector at home, doesn’t mean it isn’t linked to corruption elsewhere. Take Sweden for instance. It comes third in the index, yet the Swedish-Finnish firm TeliaSonera – 37% owned by the Swedish state – is facing allegations that it paid millions of dollars in bribes to secure business in Uzbekistan, which comes in at 153rd in the index. The company is now pulling out of business in Central Asia, but Sweden isn’t the only ‘clean’ country to be linked to dodgy behaviour overseas. As our research shows, half of all OECD countries are violating their international obligations to crack down on bribery by their companies abroad,” writes the report.

The biggest improvers in 2015 were Austria, Czech Republic, Jordan and Kuwait, while the biggest decliners were Brazil, Guatemala and Lesotho.

According to the CPI, corruption generally comprises illegal activities, which are deliberately hidden and only come to light through scandals, investigations or prosecutions. It adds that there is no meaningful way to assess absolute levels of corruption in countries or territories on the basis of hard empirical data. Possible attempts to do so, such as by comparing bribes reported, the number of prosecutions brought or studying court cases directly linked to corruption, cannot be taken as definitive indicators of corruption levels.

Instead, they show how effective prosecutors, the courts or the media are in investigating and exposing corruption. Capturing perceptions of corruption of those in a position to offer assessments of public sector corruption is the most reliable method of comparing relative corruption levels across countries. 

For a country/territory to be included in the ranking, it must be included in a minimum of three of the CPI sources. If a country is not featured in the ranking, then this is solely because of insufficient survey information and not an indication that corruption does not exist in the country. This year, 168 countries and territories are included in the index compared to 175 in 2014. Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Puerto Rico, Saint Vincent & Grenadines, Samoa and Swaziland are not included in the CPI 2015.

The CPI 2015 draws on data sources from independent institutions specialising in governance and business climate analysis. The sources of information used for the CPI 2015 are based on data gathered in the past 24 months. The CPI includes only sources that provide a score for a set of countries/territories and that measure perceptions of corruption in the public sector. Transparency International reviews the methodology of each data source in detail to ensure that the sources used meet quality standards.